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What has become of the statues of Christopher Columbus in Latin America and the United States?

2022-10-07T20:15:11.224Z


Beheaded, shot down, reviled: Christopher Columbus no longer occupies the place of brave discoverer that many adults were taught when they were in school, but has become one of the faces of the devastation caused by European colonization in America. This change has claimed dozens of statues from north to south of the continent. 


This statue will replace Columbus on Mexico Avenue 1:02

(CNN Spanish) --

Headless, shot down, reviled: Christopher Columbus no longer occupies the place of brave discoverer that many adults were taught when they were in school, but has become one of the faces of the devastation caused by European colonization In America.

This change has claimed dozens of statues from north to south of the continent.

What has happened to the monuments of the so-called "discoverer" of America?

Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, among other countries, show the turbulent trajectory of the navigator.

At least 40 statues of Columbus removed in the US

Following the death of George Floyd, which sparked a wave of protests across the country, many Confederate-era statues, seen by some as racist symbols of America's dark legacy of slavery, were removed.

Then it was Columbus' turn and cases of statues thrown into the water, decapitated or thrown to the ground were recorded.

According to an analysis by The Washington Post and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at least 40 statues of the Portuguese have been removed since 2008, most of them in the center and east of the country. .

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In recent years, moreover, many cities and states have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, in recognition of the pain and terror caused by Columbus and other European explorers.

Columbus, however, is still very popular in the United States, according to a survey carried out by the non-profit organization Monument Lab. To be more precise: he is the third man with the most statues.

He has a total of 149 monuments in his honor, second only to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Mexico, from the "discoverer" to the "Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchar"

The revision of the traditional history of the discovery of America had been gathering forces since 2019, when the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, asked the king of Spain to apologize for the "grievances" during the "so-called conquest".

At that time, this was the refusal of the Government of Spain: "The arrival, 500 years ago, of the Spaniards to the current Mexican lands cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations."

In October 2020, Mexico City officials removed from its pedestal the statue of Columbus that had been on the central Paseo de la Reforma avenue since the end of the 19th century.

They did it for a scheduled restoration, but were considering the legacy of the man they remembered.

Months later it was announced that Columbus would be replaced by a statue of an indigenous woman to recognize the contributions of the original peoples of Mexico.

So far, however, that has not happened.

In fact, the "Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan" was installed in the iconic place of the city, a space in which activists for the rights of women and indigenous people, as well as those who claim against disappearances, meet and demonstrate.

Surrounding the space where the statue was located there are message boards with allusive messages.

The fall of Columbus in the Colombian protests of 2021

In the midst of strong protests against the government of then President Iván Duque, the Ministry of Culture decided in June 2021 to remove from their pedestals a statue of Christopher Columbus and one of Queen Isabella the Catholic that were in Bogotá, near the airport Dorado International.

The measure was taken after a group of indigenous people who participated in the national strike interned to tear them down, in a day in which the Police Mobile Anti-riot Squad (Esmad) intervened.

This was the statue of Columbus removed from the public space of Bogotá during the national strike.

(Credit: Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images)

Days later, and to cheers, protesters in Barranquilla tore down another statue of the "discoverer" that was located in the center of the city.

He is not the only conqueror who has had bad luck in the country, statues of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Sebastián de Belalcázar have also been attacked.

A regional precedent: Chile 2019

In October 2019, the plans to increase the price of the subway ticket in Santiago de Chile triggered protests -several of them violent- that showed the whole world the discontent of a society that rejected the increase in the cost of living, low income and inequality.

By early November, approximately 60 statues had been damaged, according to Chile's National Monuments Council.

Among the protesters' targets were several figures linked to the colonization process, including Christopher Columbus.

The statue of the navigator located in the Cristóbal Colón square in Arica, which according to the Council had been inaugurated in 1910 for the centenary of independence, was destroyed.

The mayor of the city, Gerardo Espíndola, showed on his Twitter account how it turned out.

Also in Bolivia

In Bolivia, a year earlier, the protesters did not reach the point of Chile, but they came close.

In November 2018, the statue of Columbus located on the popular Paseo del Prado in La Paz woke up vandalized with "Colón genocidal" posters that called for his removal, reported the EFE agency, which interviewed one of the restorers.

Chance?

The incident happened after the Columbus statue was removed in downtown Los Angeles, California.

At that time, the Government assured that it did so as an act of restorative justice for the original inhabitants.

Statue of Christopher Columbus removed from downtown Los Angeles 0:32

Then-president Evo Morales celebrated the decision.

"We agree with him (Los Angeles councilman) that the so-called Discovery was a genocide and looting of RRNN (natural resources)," he said on his Twitter account.

The controversy with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

For almost a century, the "discoverer" of America had a privileged place in Buenos Aires, behind the Casa Rosada, seat of the Presidency.

However, in 2013 the Government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner decided to remove it from that site, according to EFE, and argued the need to carry out maintenance tasks.

The case generated a great controversy in which the Justice was even involved.

  • Statues of Christopher Columbus are being vandalized and torn down in the United States, why?

Who took his place?

Juana Azurduy, a figure linked to the fight for independence who is described on the page of the Argentine Ministry of Culture as “the woman who left everything for the independence revolution, losing her family and fighting against the Spanish empire in recent years of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

The sculpture of this "popular heroine" was donated at the time by Evo Morales.

After a long process, the sculpture of Columbus was relocated in 2017 in front of the Río de la Plata near one of the city's airports and, according to

 La Nación

, it can no longer be removed after the Government declared it a National Historic Monument. .

Caracas, without traces of the "discoverer"

In Venezuela this dispute occurred many years before.

In 2004, supporters of the late President Hugo Chavez made a "symbolic trial" of the statue of Columbus in Caracas' Plaza Venezuela and the sentence was to tear it down, reported the BBC, which interviewed one of the organizers.

This happened two years after Chavez changed the name of "Día de la Raza" to "Día de la Resistencia Indígena".

Years later, in 2009, Chávez ordered the removal of the last statue of Columbus that remained in the Venezuelan capital.

These were his words about the navigator who crossed the Atlantic in La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa María, according to information from 

La Nación

 and GDA: "Christopher Columbus was the leader of an invasion that produced not a massacre, but a genocide. Millions of Aborigines lived on this land, 200 years later there were three million left. What was that? Genocide."

  • READ: Why was Christopher Columbus not the hero we learned about in school?

Today, the figure of Columbus is once again in controversy after the beheading of a statue that honored him in Boston and the vandalization of his figure in several cities during the protests after the death of George Floyd, who question racism and police brutality in the United States and other parts of the world.

In Latin America this debate began much earlier.

Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus DayGeorge FloydRacism

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-10-07

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